Vasquez filled in his old Marine buddy as Foxx followed, feeling oddly excluded now that Nathan was away on Tethys. She had often been the odd one out at work, Vasquez and Allen working so closely together, like brothers, and she their commanding officer and a woman to boot. But with Nathan suddenly on the scene there had developed a sort of balance, the four of them working together more easily as a team, more equally. In some ways she regretted having Ironside put onto traffic, but he was a stranger in a strange land and it had been the best way to get him some street time to bring him up to speed in New Washington. She didn’t like to admit it to herself, and would never do so to anybody else, but she liked having Ironside around again.
‘Yo, Lieutenant?’ Foxx blinked as Vasquez called her. ‘Ryan here wants to know…’
‘Don’t tell her I said that!’ Ryan snapped.
‘…how military officers are ugly and squat, but police officers got so hot?’
Betty shoved her way in front of Foxx. ‘It’s in our genes,’ she said as she put one hand on her hip and looked Vasquez appraisingly up and down.
Foxx managed to hide her smile as she replied to Ryan. ‘And the upbringing. How did you meet Vasquez?’
‘Bad luck and trouble, ma’am,’ Ryan beamed, ‘same Marine platoon for four years, until I got my ass blown off in an Ayleean attack.’
Vasquez’s smile faded slowly. ‘That was a bad day, man.’
Ryan nodded. ‘I know but hey, I got me a lucky ticket and I’m still here! Marines were short on manpower back in the Ayleean War and they needed hands back in support roles, so I got a free ride to eternity as a Holosap. I ain’t complainin’.’
‘You don’t miss the beer?’ Vasquez asked, ‘and the women?’
Ryan sniggered and jabbed Vasquez in the ribs, his translucent elbow vanishing briefly into Vasquez’s body. ‘Man, as a
Holosap
you can have everythin’ you want, it’s all just the same except it doesn’t cost you anything!’
Foxx figured that Ryan wasn’t worried about having kids or a wife, or perhaps just hadn’t thought about that yet, as she followed the two men. Maybe when a
Holosap
was uploaded they stayed the same age, with the same mentality and outlook on life, like some digital Peter Pan, unable to grow up.
‘Why’d you call him Vasquez the Vacant?’ she asked Ryan.
Vasquez’s humor withered as Ryan chuckled out loud. ‘We were doing a combat drop onto an Ayleean ship, and Vasquez here needed to visit the bathroom. So, he goes in there before we land, and then we’re hit and some of the drop ship’s electrical systems go down. Vasquez gets locked in, but the door says “Vacant”. We didn’t have time to get him out before we landed, so he ended up sitting on the can for three hours.’
Foxx smiled sweetly at Vasquez. ‘Strange you never shared that particular anecdote with Allen or me?’
‘Must’ve slipped my mind,’ Vasquez replied tightly before he looked at Ryan. ‘Thought it might’ve slipped yours.’
‘Not any more,’ Ryan said as he tapped his amorphous digital head. ‘Nothin’ ‘scapes me now!’
Ryan led them to the armory proper, which was protected by another large steel door that at this time was open.
‘We have evidence of at least one MM–15 plasma pistol making it out of here, Ryan,’ Vasquez said. ‘You got any idea how that could happen?’
‘No way man,’ Ryan replied. ‘This place is locked up tighter than any other facility here on Polaris, exceptin’ the research and development section, and believe me nobody goes in or out of there without full clearance and all scans both ways.’
Foxx followed the two men into the armory as Ryan headed for a gantry that overlooked ranks of sealed cabinets, all of which were patrolled by robotic guards. Foxx could see signs near each of the cabinets, denoting rows and rows of plasma weapons, charges, explosives, detonators and on toward larger containers for more powerful munitions.
‘This is it,’ Ryan said. ‘Like I said, nothing comes in or out without us knowing about it. Whatever you found down there, there isn’t a person alive who could have smuggled it out of this armory.’
Foxx stared with Vasquez out over the vast armory. ‘What if the weapon wasn’t stolen at all?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just what I’m saying,’ Foxx said. ‘Is there any chance at all that the weapon we found was somehow legally or operationally out of here?’
‘Nope,’ Ryan replied. ‘MM–15s are out of service, have been for a while. Most of them are here as reserve weapons in case of a crisis but they’re deactivated and we don’t release them to anybody.’
Foxx thought for a moment longer. ‘Who else would have access to this armory, outside of military service?’
‘Nobody,’ Ryan replied, ‘except the prison service. We keep the guards armed with up to date weapons.’
Foxx and Vasquez shared a look with Betty.
‘How often do they come over here?’ Betty asked.
‘Once a month,’ Ryan replied, ‘the logs contain all the details. Mostly they just rotate weapons in and out for servicing. They don’t get through a lot of rounds on the prison, except for training purposes.’
Foxx felt a new lead burgeoning in her train of thought. ‘So, could a prison weapon make it in here in substitute for military grade firearms?’
Ryan frowned thoughtfully. ‘I suppose it’s possible, but there wouldn’t be much point, would there? You already got one weapon, why trade it out for another and take all that risk?’
Vasquez looked at Foxx curiously. ‘Where you goin’ with this?’
Foxx ordered her thoughts for a moment before she replied.
‘We’ve got an MM–15 on the streets, but no missing weapons up here. That means somebody might have somehow, however unlikely it may be, swapped the gun’s internal ID chips out.’
‘Yeah, but like Ryan said, what’s the point if you’ve already got a weapon?’
‘None,’ Foxx said, ‘if you intend to use it to shoot somebody. But if you’re intending to sell a weapon…’
Vasquez got it immediately and his eyes lit up. ‘Ex–military hardware would fetch a higher price.’
‘And would be in high demand in places like North Four,’ Betty said. ‘Half the hoodlums on the blocks there would give their right arm for a weapon like that.’
‘So whoever was shifting weapons would have needed regular access to this armory and access planet–side too,’ Foxx said as she turned to Ryan. ‘Can you access the logs for the armory and tell us the names of anybody who matches those criteria?’
Ryan nodded and blinked as he directly accessed the logs, his digital brain allowing him to filter vast quantities of information instantly. He blinked again.
‘Three individuals match the criteria: Lance Corporal Aden Ford, General Mitch Salem, and…’
Ryan hesitated.
‘What?’ Vasquez asked.
‘Corporal Anthony Ricard, Prison Service, deceased,’ Ryan finished his sentence.
Foxx stared at Ryan for a long moment. ‘You’re sure?’
Ryan nodded. ‘He helped ferry the service module over here for months and would have had access to the weapons when in transit. If he knew what he was doing, he could plausibly have switched weapon IDs for malfunctioning military weapons bound for destruction during the journey. With the weapons checked and booked out for destruction they wouldn’t be checked the other end, just counted via their chips and destroyed.’
Vasquez nodded as he caught up with Foxx’s train of thought.
‘Ricard switches out regular firearms sells the military grade weapons on the street for profit,’ he said, ‘but why the hell would he be doing that?’
Foxx felt a sense of impending doom wash over her as she thought hard.
‘The whole case against Xavier Reed was built upon the assumption that, as Ricard was the one who got shot, he must therefore have been the victim. But what if he wasn’t a victim at all?’
‘You think that Ricard was behind all of this?’
Foxx shook her head as she asked Ryan: ‘Where did most of the weapons that Ricard transported go to?’
Ryan blinked briefly as he accessed the data logs.
‘Most went to be destroyed,’ he replied, ‘the rest were sent into Tethys Gaol as service arms for the guards.’
Vasquez’s expression turned to one of dread at the same moment as Foxx’s blood ran cold.
‘He was supplying weapons back into the prison system,’ Vasquez said, ‘switching them out. But why?’
Fox felt certain she knew why as she grabbed her communicator and tried to call Detective Allen. The connection was immediately filled with static that hissed loudly in her ear as she cursed the device and shut it off. She turned to Ryan.
‘The communicators are down!’
‘The entire station’s communications are down,’ Ryan replied with some surprise. ‘Were being jammed by something that’s blocking all signals.’
Foxx thought for a moment.
‘We need to get aboard Titan and send a priority signal to Tethys Gaol from there, warn them that there may be weapons loose in the system and to lock the whole place down until we get there!’
***
XVIII
CSS Titan
Admiral Marshall strode onto the command platform of the bridge as the XO looked on.
‘What did Doctor Schmidt say?’ Olsen asked.
‘Nothing good,’ Marshall replied as he pointed at the communications officer. ‘Open a priority channel to Earth.’
Marshall straightened his uniform, aware of the eyes of the bridge crew upon him as he prepared to speak to the Director General of the Central Security Service.
Defensionem ut impetum
:
Defense as attack
, or so the old motto of the CSS went. Despite its name, the organization was more like a senate with no offensive role, only the ability to govern and request action by the CSS Fleet and Armed Forces if such action was required. Until Titan had been required to enter Earth orbit to save New Washington from destructions at the hands of the Ayleeans only months before, no human warship had entered Earth orbit for over a hundred years and…
‘What the hell’s going on?’
Olsen stepped alongside the captain, his voice low and his expression riven with deep lines of concern.
‘The Ayleeans were attacked by something and it didn’t belong to either us or them,’ Marshall replied. ‘The survivor pretty much confirmed what we suspected, and feared.’
Olsen stared at the admiral for a long moment before he replied.
‘You got any idea where these attackers came from?’ Marshall shook his head but did not reply. Olsen sighed softly for a moment before he went on. ‘I guess it was only a matter of time, Frank.’
Marshall’s mind churned over the possibilities.
‘The Ayleeans could have set this up,’ he replied, ‘just to get inside our defenses. I wouldn’t put anything past them these days.’
‘Could it be one of the ships we damaged?’ Olsen asked. ‘They could have used a wreck to set something up.’
‘I had tactical check her out,’ Marshall replied, ‘she wasn’t present during the last attack. This is something new and we can’t take the chance that they’re telling the truth and not prepare ourselves.’
The main screen in the bridge was showing a panoramic view of Saturn and Polaris Station when the Director General of the CSS Arianna Coburn, a long–service fleet commander who had moved into politics after the end of her final tour a decade prior, appeared on Titan’s bridge in perfectly transmitted three–dimensions.
‘Admiral Marshall,’ she said with a genuine smile, ‘So good to see you again so soon.’
‘And you, I only wish it were under better circumstances.’
‘We have the information that your tactical team sent,’ Arianna said. ‘The Ayleean survivors have confirmed the attack was by a non–human source?’
‘I believe so,’ Marshall replied, aware that the bridge crew were listening intently to his every word. ‘The survivor has described the attackers as
not human
.’
Arianna Coburn’s features paled slightly as she composed herself to this new and unexpected news.
‘Veracity of the report?’ she asked, her tones a little more clipped now.
‘Always hard to tell with an Ayleean, but our current assessment and that of Doctor Schmidt supports the claim. Something hit them damned hard and only three of the warship’s crew survived the attack. They never even got a shot off.’
Arianna looked briefly away as she considered the new information. As a former fleet commander, she knew only too well the warlike nature of the Ayleeans and their strength as a fighting force. To be so completely overwhelmed would have meant total and utter surprise and firepower sufficient to eliminate a fully–armed warship in a matter of moments.
‘Do you wish me, in light of this confirmation, to ask the senate to initiate the Drake Protocol?’ she asked.
Admiral Marshall drew in a deep breath. The Drake Protocol had been in existence under various names for several hundred years, and referred in name only to the legendary Drake Equation. This simple mathematical formula took the Solar System as its starting point and then considered the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, divided by the number of those stars stable enough to allow the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life, the chances of intelligent life emerging on any given planet and numerous other factors to produce an estimate of the number of planets in the galaxy inhabited by intelligent life forms comparable to Homo sapiens. Typically, the number was in the tens of thousands.
‘I concur,’ Marshall replied finally. ‘I believe that to not do so in this case would be far more dangerous than assuming that the Ayleeans are wrong.’
‘Very well,’ Arianna replied, ‘do the Ayleeans know from where the attack came?’
Doctor Schmidt replied, his connection to every computer aboard Titan allowing him access to vast data banks of information.
‘The Ayleean claims that just prior to the attack their sensors detected a brief burst of high–intensity energy emitted from the northwest corner of the globular cluster M55, in the constellation Sagittarius.’
The bridge of Titan fell silent for a long moment, and the admiral knew without a doubt why.
‘The signal,’ he said simply, and Arianna nodded in response.
‘It was only a matter of time, admiral, before something happened.’